Using tattoo ink to find cancer

The humble ink in a tattoo artist's needle could be the key to improving the detection of cancer. Cristina Zavaleta and her team at the USC Viterbi Department of Biomedical Engineering and USC Michelson Center for Bioscience recently developed new imaging contrast agents using common dyes such as tattoo ink and food dyes. When these dyes are attached to nanoparticles, they can illuminate cancers, allowing medical professionals to better differentiate between cancer cells and normal adjacent cells.